Minecraft 1.8 Update: Empty Towns and Starving Miners

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Not quite what I hoped for, but it's a good start.

By Anthony Gallegos

Like many of the people reading this article, I have a bit of a Minecraft problem. I've spent countless hours -- or more than I'm ready to publicly admit, at least – digging gigantic tunnels, constructing walls, and defending my kingdom from the likes of zombies and those green monsters whose name I dare not speak. Epic adventures have been common place in Minecraft for months, but today's 1.8 update makes the experience a bit deeper. Perhaps not as rich as I'd hoped, but it's definitely a good sign of what's to come.

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The 1.8 update adds a lot of tweaks that significantly alter the Minecraft you knew before. Surviving in a hostile world where monsters come out at night has been hard, but is even tougher now that you have to worry about food. Just as it was prior to the patch, 1.8 allows you to gather meat off the animals you kill. The difference now is that you have to eat to stay alive. If your hunger meter gets too low, you won't be able to sprint (yes, sprinting exists now), and you also won't be able to regain life. Eating also takes time, so there's no quick button mashing to gain health in the middle of a fight. It gives you yet another thing to worry about, and makes tasks like farming and food collection significantly more important.

Food has become more crucial, but advanced combat options help you become an effective hunter and fighter, too. Sprinting towards an enemy while striking knocks them back, while jumping and attacking allows you to critically strike a foe, sending sparkles into the air. If you're fighting something that can actually fight back, you can also block by holding the right mouse button. These all may sound like the most obvious and pointless additions, but if you've been fighting in Minecraft for a while, you realize how game changing these are. Combat is no longer a simple, single-button mashing affair, but a nuanced duel where you're more empowered than ever.

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The enriched combat is a great prelude to quests that will require a lot of fighting, except as of right now no quests exist. 1.8 adds villages to the world, but doesn't add NPCs or quests to make them all that useful. Granted, they make for easy resource harvesting since you can currently walk into the city and smash it into pieces for valuable resources like wood and torches, but I'm more curious to see how gameplay changes when there are other humans for me to interact with.

Like the questing system, the skill upgrade system is only half-finished. You gain experience for each creature or monster you kill, but at this point you can't allocate any skills points you earn. Like you, I'm dying to know how this will change with later patches, because for now it's basically just a huge tease.

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To a large degree survival mode is still the classic Minecraft you're either already in love with, or have listened to your friends rant about for hours. You still chip away at blocks, gather resources, and then use what you find to make a number of creations. Previously you had to do all your experimental construction with hard-earned materials, but the new Creative Mode makes it a breeze to do dry runs and just have a good time building. Creative Mode makes you invincible, allows you to take flight and gives you unlimited access to every material and item in the game. Do you want to build a replica Death Star or Battlestar Galactica? Go for it. If you have the time, you can fly around and place blocks in any configuration you choose, all without the threat of death the need to spend time harvesting.

The 1.8 update adds a lot to Minecraft, but ultimately it just makes me want more. I want quests and storylines and NPCs to interact with, skill trees to spend my experience on, and more and more RPG elements to come down the pipe. I was once content to explore an open world and just chip away at stone like an uncivilized brute, but this newest update has me wondering what Minecraft would be like with a more obvious goal. I'm not sure that I'll like it as much when the features are completed, but I sure as hell want to find out.